Monthly Dinosaur NewsBites #4

Miscellaneous

Possibly the most awesome thing I discovered is a line of dinosaur wines coming later this summer. It appears to be some kind of collaboration between the Windy Wine Company and wrestler Kraig Kessaman. A couple of the known wines so far are Velociraptor red and Brontosaurus blanc. I would LOVE to try the red. Never had a blanc, but I know I love me some red. You can read the Tweet thread here.

I plan to get one of these one day. I found DINOSAUR FOSSIL WEDDING RINGS! Allegedly dinosaur bones are embedded in the rings. There’s a really awesome blue one that I want, but the $1,000 price tag means it’ll have to wait for now. There are loads of different rings for both men and women. Not sure how they source the bone, or verify that it is in fact a true dinosaur fossil. Judging from the internet, there’s no telling what may pass for a dinosaur.

One of the stranger things I learned last month is that there are apparently sightings of dinosaurs in Australia and Africa. These are akin to Loch Ness monster sightings, mind you. This month I ran across a digital comic adventure involving dinosaurs and set in Africa. Carthago is a series of comics involving, bigfoot, African dinosaurs, and other similar creatures. The dinosaur issue is billed as a standalone story, or you can pick up the whole series. Cryptozoology is fun.

Got an hour and a half to kill? There’s a new dinosaur movie on Amazon. Revenge of the Lost is a new post-dinosaur-apocalypse movie. It’s the studio’s first movie, so don’t expect Jurassic Park CGI. It is free to watch though with a Prime subscription.

Science-y Stuff

Just one bit of educational stuff. Looks like volcanoes paved the way for the age of dinosaurs. However it worked, it made the environment more dinosaur friendly. You can read more about it here.

Kickstarter

Still have some dinosaur crowdfunding happening. I missed a couple because I didn’t find out until too late, so if you run across any projects that would appeal to adults, please hit me up with a link.

Active

• Jurassic Hunter – An open world dinosaur hunting game. I would really love to play a game like this.
• Pastel Dinosaur Origami Pins – Just like it sounds. Add some pieces of dinosaur flair!
• Large 3D dinosaur Puzzle – Like those dinosaur skeletons you put together, but BIGGER.

Completed

• Jurassic Plush 2 – Plush Triceratops and Spinosaurus critters.
• The Land That Time Forgot: Terror from the Earth’s Core – Graphic novel based on Edgar Rice Burrough’s classic.

Dinosaur Gaming

Being a fan of video games, I managed to run across a mod for Left 4 Dead 2 that lets you play as Velociraptors. You can check out the models below, they’re actually pretty nice. You can even see the claws holding the weapons. When I saw that Left 4 Dead 2 was just super cheap in the Steam summer sale, it was a done deal. Good stuff.

For you Dungeons and Dragons fans out there, the Neverwinter Nights video game is getting a dinosaur expansion. Tomb of Annihilation, as it’s called, hits July 25th. This is actually a free to play game, and super casual friendly. The only downside is that the Tomb of Annihilation dinosaur content is for higher level characters. It’ll be around forever though, so you won’t miss out if you’re not playing right now.

The next Mario game lets you play as a dinosaur apparently. Super Mario Odyssey is coming to the Nintendo Switch on October 27. The dinosaur is a T-Rex with a little Mario hat and a mustache in case you need some visual imagery.

Last, but not least, is something I’m a little excited about. Magic the Gathering, the collectible card game, is getting a DINOSAUR expansion! Dinosaurs and pirates, to be precise, but I’m pretty whatever about pirates. Anyway, the promo artwork shows dinosaurs with feathers, so this is one of the first attempts that I’ve seen to incorporate more recent scientific discoveries about dinosaurs into media. I played Magic as a kid, and I’m planning to give it a try again when the ‘Ixalan’ expansion hits in September.